Warmth
by thesecondshelf
Summary: "She is absolutely intoxicating. He should have predicted this, really, considering how passionately she dives into everything that interests her. He just still has a hard time believing he has somehow ended up on that list of things that interest her." A change in temperature.(Ch1: Shell Cottage, April 1998. Ch2: The orchard, May 1998. Ch3: Ron's attic bedroom, June 1998)
1. Chill

**Warmth**

A/NL Based on a prompt DivaGonzo sent me a while ago over on tumblr that she's probably forgotten about. Eventually, there should be a second half of this based on the second half of her prompt - but I'll keep that to myself in case I never get around to writing it.

* * *

Ron has to check in on her, before he can get any sleep. He thinks, briefly, about how much that fact would have bothered him (or embarrassed or even _enraged_ him, actually) just a few months ago, but now that need to care for Hermione is almost comforting.

He finds her in the kitchen, bent over a cup of tea. He can't help but observe her from the doorway, irrationally relieved to find her safe and sound (or as close to that as they can manage these days- _she is safe here_ , he reminds himself, and wills his heart to slow down).

"Don't look at me like that," she rasps, looking up at him and interrupting his thoughts. He recognizes that tone – her _I'm-going-to-claim-you-started-this-once-we're -arguing_ tone. He hasn't decided yet if he's going to let her.

"Like what?" he says, doing his best to raise one eyebrow. He doesn't think he manages it, not like Bill and his dad can, but after she replies that hardly matters anymore.

"Like you pity me," she says, dropping her eyes to the cup of tea in front of her. And just like that, the ersatz squabble he had been preparing for is gone. His heart twists and pounds painfully in his chest and his tongue weighs uncomfortably in his mouth, but he answers her. She is looking for a fight, he knows, but he can't give that to her- not now.

"Hermione," he nearly whispers, crossing the room to sit next to her at the table. "I don't pity you." She doesn't look up from her tea. He swallows heavily, and resolves to choke out the rest of his thought.

(He remembers the words Bill spoke to him in this very kitchen just a few months ago, when he lamented all his faults. _"I don't care what happened out there - This isn't about you anymore. They need you and you know it – so get over yourself and fix it.")_

"Hermione," he starts again, "please believe me – I am feeling a lot of things right now, but not one of them is pity." He doesn't say _for you_ – I am feeling a lot of things _for you_ – but he hopes she hears those two silent words anyway. Her hands are wrapped tight around the cup in front of her, and he reaches for them with both his own. He can see the heat rising from her tea, but her hands around it are so cold he nearly recoils.

She notices, and tenses. He settles his palms against her knuckles, his much-larger hands completely surrounding hers. He doesn't relax until she does.

"I can't get warm," she admits, and he notices then just how many layers she is wearing. It is cool by the water at night, but not so cool that she should need to bundle up that much.

"C'mere," he says gruffly, and he moves his left to her chair and tugs her toward him. The legs of her chair squeak as he drags it across the floor and he winces, hoping that he hasn't woken anyone. He can still hear Harry and Dean's heavy breathing from the living room, so he relaxes enough to remove that hand from her chair and reach around toward Hermione's left shoulder.

His intention truly was to reach for the far corner of her chair - to let his arm loosely hang there, and wait for Hermione to lean back, if she wanted (he hoped that she wanted) - but he can actually feel the cold radiating from her, from under all those layers, as he reaches, and he just can't help himself. He settles his overlarge palm firmly on her shoulder and pulls her to him, running his hand shakily up and down her arm and murmuring words that he pretends are to comfort her, but that he needs to hear too.

"I told you I was cold," she mutters, still looking for that argument, he knows, because that is easier. An argument would be so much easier than whatever this is, whatever they have been oscillating around for _years_ now.

"You should have told me sooner," he admonishes, one hand still holding hers against her warm cup of tea and the other moving up and down her far-too-bony shoulder. He tries not to remember how feather-light she was when he held her in his arms as they handed on the beach, how even as a dead weight (although he hates to even _think_ that word in the same sentence as her) in his arms that were not nearly as strong as they were during the last Quidditch season, she weighed so little.

"What good would that have done?" she huffs.

"I could have gotten you warmer clothes," he muses, "Made sure you were eating more. You're too thin."

"Hark who's talking," she grumbles, but she burrows into him as she does, so he can't seem to take it as the insult she intended. "And that's not why I'm cold," she breathes, an admission. She is still staring at the tea in front of her (or perhaps at their joined hands on the cup - his palm is beginning to sweat and that should embarrass him, but apparently not enough to move it).

"I know," he says, because he does. It isn't the sea breeze, or her clothing, or even her small frame or the lack of sleep that's making her cold. It's everything else - it's the danger that lurks just outside the boundaries of this property, and the damage that monster did to her. It's not knowing what happens next, but knowing that they're the only ones know enough to even try to figure it out. It's the fear of failure, of their own failure that will also mean the failure of everything that's good in this world. His heart his hammering in his chest again (or still, really), and he wants to say more - he wants to say a lot of things, but he just can't get the words out.

She looks up at him, then. Their faces are so close together - closer than they ever have been, probably. She sighs, and he can _feel_ it, her breath warm (but not as warm as it should be) on his face, and he thinks that this entire thing should probably terrify him, but it doesn't. Quite the opposite, really. And everything is an absolute mess ( _they_ are an absolute mess), but hell if he doesn't outright grin down at her.

"I don't pity you," he states, suddenly, because he needs her to know. "I think you're amazing." She blinks, and he knows that she felt his words rather than just heard them, uttered so close to her lips. His face is heating up, (because he's never been quite _that_ forward with her before), and he wonders if she can feel that, too.

"I know," she confesses, and before he decides if he is going to allow himself to lean in that fraction of an inch, she moves her face away from his, dropping her head onto his left shoulder. Strangely, he is not disappointed. He tugs her a little closer (closer than he has ever dared to), and rests his head atop the curls that she can never quite get control over.

She sighs into him. Her entire side is pressed against him, hip to crown, and he realizes that she isn't shaking anymore. He sighs back, and vows silently to stay right there, as close as she'll have him for as long as she'd like.


	2. Heat

A/N: I am relatively certain that this is not at all what DivaGonzo had in mind when she sent me the prompt "Hermione watches Ron work with his Dad in the orchard picking apples for summer dessert" - but this is what happened, so it is what it is. This is officially my first multiple chapter fic... although really, both chapters stand alone. They are just so interrelated I couldn't justify separating them. I really appreciate the reviews on the first part of this - love you all! - and I'll get around to answering them as soon as I can, but I wanted to post this first. It was supposed to be finished for May 2nd... but, alas, life happens. I hope you enjoy!

* * *

Hermione has to find him before she can relax. Part of her thinks this is ridiculous - they won the war _and_ they are safe within the Burrow's wards, after all. Another part, however, acknowledges that she spent months keeping track of his every move, and it would be unreasonable to expect herself to drop the habit instantly.

Another small part of her that she tries not to pay too much attention to says: _Besides, Ron likes it_.

She finds him in the orchard. He is standing precariously atop an old wooden ladder as his father holds it steady. She is confused, at first. She wants to remind him - you are a _wizard_ , you do not need a _ladder_ \- but she continues approaching, and the silly critique gets stuck in her throat as she reaches them.

They are speaking softly in words she cannot hear but a tone that cannot be mistaken. She can tell that both their eyes are red-rimmed. They are not looking at each other. There are multiple baskets on the ground full of far too many apples - far more than even _Molly_ can turn into dessert in a single day - and she suspects that, if she had not happened upon them, they would have continued to pick the trees bare.

As soon as they catch sight of her Arthur makes his exit so quickly with a bushel of fruit under each arm that she doesn't even get to greet him. She means to comment on it, but Ron is standing next to her, towering over her _(when did he get back on the ground?)_ and he is pushing a wayward curl back behind her ear and she nearly melts beneath that simple touch.

"I didn't mean to chase your dad away," she apologizes.

"You didn't chase him. I suspect he would have left far earlier, had I not pulled the ladder out." Her confusion must have been apparent, for he continued. "He's been leaving abruptly every time he starts to tear up. I don't think he wants us to see him cry. I thought maybe if he knew I wasn't looking at him, he'd stay a little longer."

"That's really sweet of you," she whispers, her own eyes beginning to water. She can tell Ron's are, as well, even though he isn't looking at her.

He shrugs. "I'm not really good at this stuff," he says, pulling an old bed sheet out from between the apple baskets that still remain and spreading it out on the ground before them. He sits down on the center of the cloth and she joins him, sitting far closer than she would have dared a few short weeks ago. It is warm – warmer than late may should be – but she relishes in the heat that passes between them.

"I beg to differ," she counters. He shrugs again, but he leans into her bare shoulder as he does.

"I don't know how to do this part," he insists.

"No one does," she assures him.

"That's not - I mean-" He shakes his head, so close to her own that she can feel the movement. "I never imagined it turning out this way."

"How did you imagine it?" she asks, wondering what he will say (wondering what she wants him to say).

"I guess I thought it would be the other way around," he answers, before she could decide.

"Your dad comforting you?" she questions.

"No," he whispers. "Fred would be the one on the ladder." The _I-would-be-the-one-in-the-ground_ is silent, but she hears it loud and clear just the same. Her heart twists and pounds painfully in her chest and she gulps, the warm air that was so comforting moments ago completely stifling her.

"Ron," she very nearly sobs at his profile, willing him to face her.

"Don't look at me like that," he whispers. It is very clearly a challenge, and she takes it.

"Like what?" she asks. She doesn't bother to attempt the Weasley eyebrow-raise that should accompany the question. He isn't looking at her, and she couldn't pull it off anyway.

"I don't know," he admits. "Just don't." He turns his head even further in the other direction and wipes his eyes with the back of his freckled hand. "I don't know how to do this," he repeats.

"I could climb the ladder, if that would make it easier," she offers. It's not a good joke, but he manages to breathe out half a laugh anyway.

"I deserve that, I guess," he mutters.

She thinks about the last time they sat like this, side by side, and had a difficult conversation. She thinks about that night all the time, and she thinks about it again now, and she forces herself to be brave – as brave as he was – and she takes his left hand in her right and leans further against him, resting her head against his shoulder.

It's silly, considering they are the best-friends-plus-maybe-more and they have already shared a kiss where he quite literally lifted her off her feet in the middle of a battleground, but this is somehow the most heart-racing and intimate thing she has ever done.

"You're warm," he comments, a smile growing on his profile, and he threads their fingers together. She heats further at the contact.

"It's warm out," she responds, hesitantly.

"It was warm in Tinworth, too," he challenges.

"Not this warm," she argues, because it feels wonderful to argue with him. His voice is still rough with emotion and she knows there is nothing she can do to fix this for him, but this is a start.

"No, not this warm," he concedes- more a _I-will-let-this-go-for-now_ than a _you-are-right_. It's enough for her.

"New dress?" he rasps. He isn't looking at her, which is probably for the best. She blushes.

"New to me," she admits. "Fleur brought it over this morning. Most of my things had to be tossed, after everything."

"You should keep it. You look great," he says softly, bravely.

The compliment is new and overwhelming.

"Thanks," she whispers back. "You do too," she forces out, because he does. He has gained a few pounds since the end of it all, and he is so freckled from the sun he is almost tan, and he is _alive_ (and really, it is only the last one that matters).

He huffs, as if he doesn't believe her, but he doesn't protest. In fact, he runs his thumb along the back of her hand and squeezes her fingers within his own, and really, it feels like the exact opposite of protesting. She gasps a little at the contact, and he turns to look at her, searching. She doesn't know what it is he is looking for on the planes of her face, but she hopes very much that he finds it.

"Is this ok?" he asks, meeting her eyes, clasping their palms even closer together.

"Yes," she insists. "Of course," she adds, because she can't bear the thought of him doubting this. She may not know what _this_ is, but she knows that she wants it desperately, and she worries that maybe he doesn't know that - but she doesn't know how to tell him.

"I'm not really good at _this_ , either," he says. It sounds like an admission of guilt, although what for she has no idea.

"I beg to differ," she counters. Again.

"That's kind of you," he chuckles. "False, but kind of you."

She shrugs in response. "Maybe I'm just misunderstanding what you mean by _this_ ," she says, because that is possible. If she doesn't know quite what the word means to her, how could she know what it means to him?

He is still staring down at her, that inquisitive look on his face. He must find what he is seeking, finally, for he lifts their joined palms and presses a kiss to the back of hand.

 _Oh._

His lips linger on her skin far longer than necessary to get his point across, and when he finally ends the contact he keeps her hand close enough to his mouth that she can feel his warm breath on the damp imprint he has left behind. She shivers, despite (or perhaps because of) the heat that flows through her at the gesture.

And then he raises a single eyebrow.

"Is that what _this_ is?" she breathes, summoning every ounce of Gryffindor courage she has left within her to maintain eye contact.

It is difficult to do. His eyes are breathtaking.

" _This_ is whatever you want it to be," he says, lowering their hands and separating them so he can rub his palm nervously on his trousers. "I mean it," he says, unnecessarily, because she can tell that what he says is true, "Literally, whatever. You are - this is -" he shakes his head, as if the action will help the words he is desperately seeking come to the surface, and looks away.

She turns to face him, folding her feet underneath herself and pressing her knees against his thigh, raising herself to as close to his eye level as she can manage. She runs her own hands down the skirt of her borrowed dress, smoothing it across her lap. His eyes follow her movement and he gulps noticeably.

 _Oh._

She reaches up to place her left palm against the right side of his face, turning him towards her again. He is warm, so warm, and his cheek is rough with stubble, and he must be able to tell that she is shaking, but he doesn't seem to mind.

He doesn't seem to mind at all.

"I want _this_ ," she says, "with you," and she is so glad she continued, because she actually watches his eyes darken with the last two words she says and he wraps his palm around her shoulder and tugs her toward him, gently, meeting her halfway to close the distance between them.

She sighs into him. His lips are pressed against her own, warm and insistent, and she shivers yet again, overwhelmed. Her last coherent thought is that she may not have the words to describe _this_ , this thing they are becoming that causes her heart to balloon wonderfully in her chest, but that's quite all right- no - _more_ than all right, for now.


	3. Warmth

A/N: A couple of things.

1\. I haven't read Cursed Child yet, and I know I will eventually, but I wanted to write about Ron at least one more time before I read that new version of him.

2\. This very clearly isn't smut, but it is still the most explicit thing I have ever written, and it's making me super nervous, so I hope you enjoy.

and 3. I feel like there are still some tense issues here (writing in present tense is weird but I love how I can let Ron ramble in it, so I did it anyway)... but I am tired of looking at it, so here you are.

* * *

He knows he shouldn't, but Ron stomps up the Burrow's stairs anyway, two at a time because his legs are too damn long not to, and he wonders if this anger will ever fade. His blood feels impossibly hot coursing through his veins, and he's just so tired of everything being so fucked up, and he can't see how any of this is ever going to be okay ever again.

And he knows that it'll have to be. He does. But that doesn't stop everything from feeling hopeless right now, today, when Mum is crying again, and Bill and Fleur and Charlie have all left, and George hasn't come out of his room, and Dad's (still) at work, and Ginny and Percy had another argument so she's out on her broom and no one knows where the hell Percy went, so yet again it's Ron to the rescue...

And really, he should be happy about this. Not that everything's a mess, obviously, but that everyone else seems to trust him to handle it. All of a sudden he's not Ickle Ronnikins anymore, and everyone keeps looking to him for help and advice, and that's nice. It is, really. But it would also be really nice if someone else could hold it together for a day or two so he could take a fucking break. And Hermione left this morning to spend time with her parents, which is also good, of course, and Harry's been in meetings with Kingsley, which is also good, and important, but that doesn't make him feel any better about somehow being utterly alone in a house full of his own damn family members.

It's just too much, sometimes.

He throws open his attic bedroom door, and resigns himself to spending a couple of hours staring angrily staring at the ceiling, trying to literally sweat his rage away until he's needed again.

But then he looks up, and suddenly, he feels as if he's pulled that rampage he's been on out of its downward spiral, executing a Wronski Feint so spectacular that even Viktor Krum couldn't hope to replicate it.

 _Take that, Krum._

Hermione Granger is lying on his bed. He didn't even know she was back at the Burrow, and she's lying on his bed, on her stomach, leaning on her elbows, flipping through what seems to be an old magazine. Her (bare) knees are bent and her (bare) ankles are linked together, hovering over a (not bare, this is not that kind of fantasy) part of her body that Ron is trying very, very hard not to stare at.

Well, if that didn't change his demeanor faster than you can say quidditch.

She's looking over her left shoulder at him now, her view obscured by a few of those curls she can never quite get control of, and he barely hears her say "Are you alright?" over the sound of his own beating heart.

Barely.

"Now I am," he says. She rolls over onto her back, setting the old magazine on the floor, and scoots over in what even he can tell is an obvious invitation to join her.

And then she smiles at him, almost _smirks_ in a way he's never seen her smile (and he's _definitely_ never seen a smile like that directed at him), and the temperature in the already stuffy attic room seems to fly through the actual roof, and he has to turn away from her and think about anything other than his girlfriend (girlfriend!) who is in his bedroom, on his bed, and...

... yeah, that's really not helping.

"Are you sure you're okay?" she asks, and of course she does, he's looking anywhere but her and turning away and muttering all sorts of unappealing things under his breath that he really really hopes she cannot hear.

"Yeah," he assures her, and he thanks whatever gods are currently torturing him that his voice is miraculously lower than usual, rather than the squeak he was almost expecting, given the circumstances. "Just give me a minute," he huffs.

"If you're sure," she agrees, and he risks a look at her, and she actually looks concerned. He definitely can't let her worry about something as silly as this, so he tries to explain as best he can without completely embarrassing himself.

"Sorry. I just wasn't expecting to find you in my bed. You caught me off guard. I, uh," he trails off, shrugging. "I need a minute," he repeats, and he meets her eyes, and he must be even more transparent than he thought he was because she looks confused only for a moment before her eyes widen and flick down to below his waist for a moment and she blushes as red as he ever has.

And she says "Oh," in a voice that is really impeding his progress.

"Looked like a dream I had once," he jokes, hoping to get out of this situation with at least a shred of dignity, a laugh-with-him-not-at-him opportunity.

"You've had a dream about me?" she questions, and if he's not mistaken (and oh he hopes he is not mistaken), she shifts her body against his old Chudley Cannons quilt and she isn't laughing, but she sure as hell doesn't seem to be disapproving, either.

In for a knut, in for a galleon, he supposes.

"More than one," he admits, and he gives up on trying to calm his libido (it's clearly not happening anytime soon) and he joins her on his bed. He leans over her and kisses her hello, slow and sweet, doing his best to keep his pelvis angled away from her because he isn't stupid enough to think that her curiosity is that sort of invitation. "A lot more than one," he mumbles into her mouth when she wraps a hand around the back of his neck to keep him close.

 _Damn._

She is absolutely intoxicating. He should have predicted this, really, considering how passionately she dives into everything that interests her. He just still has a hard time believing he has somehow ended up on that list of things that interest her. He thinks, ironically, that he had come upstairs to try to cool down, and now she was riling him up in a very, very different way that he had felt when he entered the room just moments ago, and then he lets himself get lost in her, and he stops thinking altogether.

He hovers over her, his arms shaking with some combination of exertion and want. She either doesn't realize how much energy he's expending to stay put, or she knows exactly what's going on and she's determined to break his concentration, because she takes his self-imposed and tenuous stillness as an opportunity to _move_. Her hands are trailing up and down his back, her short fingernails scratching lightly along his spine. Her lips are insistent, more so than they've ever been in the few short weeks since he'd first felt them upon his own. She actually bites his bottom lip before she licks across it as if to soothe it, and _damn_ if that isn't a sensation he is going to remember for the rest of his life. She holds him as close to her as she can, as he works so hard to keep parts of them separated, and when she makes a sound in frustration that he wants to describe as a _moan_ (but he really doesn't think he can handle that), he wonders idly how long a person can survive with a lust-induced fever.

He breaks away from her at that point, reluctantly, because his nervous system needs a break and his lungs have suddenly decided that they need air, of all things. He buries his face in that soft spot between her neck and her (bare!) shoulder as he tries to catch his breath.

"I thought men dreamt about beautiful, unattainable women," she teases from somewhere near his left ear, her voice lower, sexier than he's ever heard it. It takes him a moment to realize what it is that she's joking about, his brain caught in a Hermione-induced fog, his skin hot from all the places she had touched and is still touching him. When he figures out what she means, finally, he pulls his face away from that wonderful hiding space to look at her, and raises his eyebrows in disbelief.

"Until about three weeks ago, love, you were a beautiful, unattainable woman," he murmurs, and for a moment he's sort of proud of himself, for coming up with a line like that on the spot, especially when she had driven him so far to distraction he was worried he would never find his way back.

Then Hermione frowns at him.

"That's not true," she argues. She rolls over onto her right side, propping herself up on her elbow, putting some distance between them (which was much-needed, if she expected him to participate in this conversation). "You knew long before that. I know that we didn't _kiss_ until 3 weeks ago, but that's not when this started."

"Okay," he admits, mirroring her posture so they are lying face to face over his old pillow. "I had some idea before that. But not as much as you seem to think I did. You give me too much credit."

"Somebody's got to," she grumbles, rolling her eyes at him.

He smiles, recognizing the statement as the both insult and compliment that it is. He knows, intellectually, that he is far too hard on himself. He knows that he shouldn't spend all his time comparing himself to the amazing people around him, and he knows that the fact that his loved ones are such brilliant and talented people probably says a lot more good about him than bad. He also knows that those people do think highly of him, as evidenced by the events of earlier this afternoon that led him to storm up here to begin with. But knowing something and truly allowing yourself to feel it are, unfortunately, two different things.

And Hermione smiles at him softly, and she raises her left hand to run it through his newly-shorn hair and run the pad of her thumb against the corner of his eye (which must look as wet and warm as it feels), and he realizes, suddenly, that she understands.

And his world shifts again. The heat he was feeling before isn't gone, exactly, but it has been overcome by a warmth so overwhelming that he can't keep it to himself any longer, and he reaches for her.

She lets out a small "oof" as he unsettles her, moving her weight from her own elbow to his chest, and soon he is holding her closer than he ever has before. They are pressed against each other at a million different pressure points, his arms wrapped around her and hands splayed across her back, his nose buried in her unruly hair.

"I appreciate that, you know," he mumbles into that same spot between her neck and her shoulder, the one that elicited an oh-so-different reaction from his body just moments ago.

"I know," she whispers back, her arms snaking behind his head and under his torso to clutch him just as fiercely as he is holding her. And this is good - this is really good. Probably even better, somehow, than the feverish embrace she had tried her best to pull him into before. And he isn't quite sure what liking this warmth better than that earlier overpowering heat makes him, but if he gets to keep feeling like this, he isn't sure he cares.

"You're right," he continues softly, his lips brushing against her neck as he speaks. "I knew, but I still never believed it, somehow. 'ts why I kept fucking it up. I could see what was happening, but I still couldn't convince myself that you actually wanted me."

"Have you managed to convince yourself now?" she asks, her own lips pressed against his ear, her hand pressed firmly against his lower back. "Or do I have to keep proving it to you?"

"A little reassurance never hurt anyone," he manages to reply, just before her lips claim his again and they both cease speaking for a long time.


End file.
